


she is staggering

by orangesparks



Category: The Adventures of Pete & Pete
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Gen, Growing Up, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangesparks/pseuds/orangesparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spring fever rears its ugly head in Wellsville yet again. Pete only hopes he survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she is staggering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carolinga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinga/gifts).



It was cold enough out to freeze your nose hairs.  
  
Spring had reached Wellsville, but I guess the weather hadn’t exactly received the memo yet.  
  
I glared into the mirror. Thanks to the cold, my ears had perpetually turned such a bright pink that they were camouflaged against my hair.  
  
(My brother, Pete, had found his own solution to the nose hair problem. Jammed up both his nostrils was the tiniest scarf I’d ever seen – a gift from his best friend, Nona F. Mecklenberg.)  
  
My own best friend, Ellen, rolled her eyes when I made my crisis known to her. Granted, we were talking on the phone. But trust me – hers is an eyeroll made audible across twelve county lines. It’s kind of a superpower.  
  
“Things could be worse, Pete.”  
  
Ellen is the most practical person I know. Maybe I should’ve taken her advice. Or _maybe_ , I thought, scowling at my reflection, I could find special earmuffs that would be allowed during class. It was a medical emergency, after all.  
  
 _Things could be worse._  
  
“How?” I demanded.  
  
Maybe I was tempting fate when I asked that question.  
  
 _How could things be worse? Well, Carrothead_ , I could practically hear Fate say, chuckling in a manner alarmingly similar to that of Endless Mike Hellstrom, my arch-nemesis, _why don’t we find out?_  
  
  
-  
  
  
We were on the bus home from school when Fate decided to lay its trump card on me.  
  
“It doesn’t feel like spring yet,” I complained. The weather was gradually warming, but not much. (My ear situation had only gone down from a Code Red to a Code Teal.)  
  
“Yeah,” Ellen agreed. “But at least the Fever hasn’t turned people into lovesick jerks yet.”  
  
I snickered. Trust Ellen to find the silver lining in our lack of friendlier weather.  
  
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, smiling back at me, before turning her head to stare out the window. Her mind could have been on a million things at that moment.  
  
But suddenly, mine was on only one.  
  
Her.  
  
Her dark, shiny hair; her flashing eyes; the incredibly wary expression currently on her face---  
  
“Uh, Pete?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“…why are you staring at me like that?”  
  
  
-  
  
  
(The instant my brother saw me arrive home with that goofy look on my face, he called the Poison Control Center. When they told him that lovesick jerks didn’t fall under their jurisdiction, he settled for quarantining our shared bedroom himself.)  
  
  
-  
  
  
Now that I’d come to my senses about me and Ellen, it was time to spring a plan into action. I opened my trombone case, beaming.  
  
Luckily for her, our years in marching band were about to pay off.  
  
I was about twenty notes into a winning rendition of “Love Rollercoaster” when Ellen’s bedroom window slammed open.  
  
“What are you _doing_?” she shrieked.  
  
“Serenading you!”  
  
“It’s one in the morning!”  
  
All the better for my music to be uninterrupted by the daily drone of traffic. I raised my trombone back to my lips so she could continue to appreciate the magical, musical moment.  
  
The alarm clock she threw at me told me she wasn’t appreciating the magic or the music quite yet.  
  
“Ow,” I muttered, nursing the goose-egg already blooming on my head. Ellen’s always had pretty good aim.  
  
A loud snicker to my right startled me out of my pain.  
  
“Sorry, Carrothead. Guess Hickle finally realized she’s done with weak, pathetic, red-headed hand-saws, and is ready for a Kraftsbilt 4000.”  
  
Stepping out of the bushes was Endless Mike Hellstrom, shiny Krebstar electric bass strapped to his back, lugging a portable amp and miles worth of extension cords. My eyes widened as I realized his intentions.  
  
“You’re not—“ I started, edging away from him.  
  
Mike grinned, the expression feral.  
  
“Oh, I am, Wrigley. Now step aside, and let a real man do this right.”  
  
(It took even less time for Ellen to start pelting things at Mike than she had with me. This, at least, was minor consolation.)  
  
But apparently the conveyor belt of suitors outside Ellen’s window hadn’t finished rolling tonight.  
  
I watched in disbelief as Wendell Hyde, shyest kid in school, made his way over to the spot recently occupied by Mike and myself. He closed his eyes, and began to belt out “O Sole Mio”.  
  
Apparently, the kid hadn't gotten the memo that making noise outside Ellen's window at one in the morning wasn't going to win him any points.  
  
Normally, I liked Wendell. But I still smirked, waiting for Ellen to destroy him. Waiting for her to jerk her window back open and throw things at him until he ran, cowering in fear.  
  
That didn't happen.  
  
Instead, the front door opened. Ellen stood there, saying nothing, a  _smile_ on her face.  
  
And then, when he finished? She  _clapped_.  
  
She clapped. For him.  
  
(The sudden sound of crushing plastic and snapped bass strings indicated that Endless Mike had also stuck around to witness this.)  
  
  
-  
  
  
After that? Things got even _more_ sickening.  
  
Apparently, Wendell was also quite the talented sculptor, and in their shared art class? He constructed a life-size statue of Ellen using only recycled Kreba-Kola cans and dental floss.  
  
She loved it.  
  
"Isn't it great, Pete?" she asked me. She was rolling it home that afternoon in a small wagon borrowed from Mr. Beverly, the school handyman. The bus was too crowded to fit me, her, and her statue all into one seat.  
  
"It's... uh... yeah," I managed.  
  
"Wendell says that he thinks the world would be a more beautiful place if everyone learned to recycle.”  
  
For the shyest kid in school, Wendell Hyde sure had a little too much to say these days.  
  
"What are you going to do with it?" I asked, hesitantly. Ellen shrugged.  
  
"I don't know. Let Dad decide, I guess. I mean, we're going away to college this fall, and he gets so depressed every time I mention it. Maybe if he has this statue, the house might feel less empty to him."  
  
Mr. Hickle might have a thirty-pound aluminum statue to remember his daughter by, but the way Wendell Hyde and his little statue-building, Italian-ballad-crooning schemes kept progressing--  
  
I was going to have nothing.  
  
  
-  
  
  
I was walking back to my own house when a pair of hands yanked me back roughly by the shoulders, sending me sprawling behind Mrs. Chicutti’s prized magnolia garden.  
  
There stood Endless Mike Hellstrom, looking down at me with his maniacal grin in place. I prayed the imminent beating would be swift.  
  
(Or, at least, that I was knocked unconscious first, so I wouldn't feel a thing.)  
  
But instead of pounding my face in, Mike crossed his arms over his chest. Studying me. The odd, confused look on his face - though rare - was not a good one.  
  
Endless Mike was actually trying to  _think_ about something.  
  
"The way I'm looking at the situation, Wrigley," he said, "we need to help each other out."  
  
I frowned, brushing dirt from my jeans as I stood. "What are you talking about?"   
  
He rolled his eyes, long-suffering expression in place.  
  
"I'm talking,  _Carrothead_ , about joining forces and defeating that scrawny little lounge singer!"  
  
"You mean... Wendell?"  
  
"Precisely. He's trying to steal away my-- I mean,  _our..._ lovely acquaintance, Miss Hickle. Doing an embarrassingly good job of it, too. Things aren't looking so good for us, Wrigley."  
  
I bit down a reply about how Ellen wasn't just an acquaintance, she was my  _best friend_  - not to mention that if she had to sum up her personal views on  _him_ , "scum beneath a rotting algae eater" would rank among her nicer ways to phrase things.  
  
Instead, I considered what Mike was offering.  
  
With Wendell out of the way, Ellen would be able to finally see how much sense  _we_ made together. It was perfect.  
  
"It's a deal," I said.  
  
Mike grinned, slapping me hard on the back. Soon, everything would finally start going my way.  
  
But they say when you make a deal with the devil, you'd better be prepared to pay the price. And in Wellsville, I guess bullying socketheads who like to play vertebraehockey with their weaker classmates' spines... well, they're as close as you can get to the devil.  
  
As usual, I had underestimated Mike. And it was a price I was going to pay dearly.  
  
  
-  
  
  
With Endless Mike on my side, getting rid of Wendell was even easier than I’d anticipated.  
  
(There are plenty of worse things than being shipped against your will to Tahiti for the spring. At least, I didn't feel too guilty. I'd packed him sunscreen and a month's supply of Little Krebbie's snack cakes, at any rate.)  
  
  
-

 

Ellen took the news of Wendell's sudden disappearance better than I thought she would.  

(I almost gave myself away when I tried to reassure her by listing all the exciting tourist attractions Tahiti had to offer, but quickly recovered by faking an abrupt coughing fit.)

"It isn't like him to just run away like that," she mused. "He's usually so responsible."

"That isn't fair, Ellen," I told her. "What if he's out there, finally pursuing his dream of singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs? I mean - who are we to judge?"

"That's right," chimed in a third voice. "I hear lounge singing is gonna be the new hair metal."

Ellen and I froze in our tracks. I slowly risked a glance backwards,  and sure enough--

There stood Endless Mike Hellstrom, wearing a smile that would send even a Great White off screaming for its mommy.

"Hyde was right, to get out when he could," Mike continued,  wedging himself between me and Ellen, slinging an arm around each of our shoulders. 

Grinning ever wider, he focused that nightmarish gaze on me as he murmured, "It was... smart of him."  


 

-

 

Mike and I had never exactly been pals, but at least our rivalry was simple enough to understand; easy to chart as the constellation, Horologium.

It was the weird history he shared with Ellen that really made me squirmy.

Once upon a time, oddly enough,  they'd almost been... _friends_ , as much as the concept made my gut juices roil.

I blamed it on the evil power of shop class.

Ellen's love of metalwork was rivaled only by Mike's, and I was treated to plenty of fascinating stories from her about the way he handled a blowtorch or managed to navigate a saw to cut the finest grain, back during my imprisonment in Mr. Slurm's class. But the semester ended, I escaped with a B+ and my thorax intact, and that had been the end of the whole bizarre situation.

Until now. 

If I thought that Wendell's disappearance meant things would be easy, I was dead wrong.

Every time Ellen and I were supposed to hang out, along came Endless Mike, appearing seemingly out of nowhere like a bad rash. Every slice of pizza, movie, or museum trip would inevitably feature his nylon Hellstrom Exterminating jacket and ominous cackle.

(I think he was using radar.) 

Ellen was annoyed as I was, the first few times. But eventually - it seemed she was just as glad to spend time with him as she was with _me._

We were in the middle of the Local Heroes exhibit at the Wellsville County Museum, about to look at the Dora Bottomhauser display (she discovered more constellations in Wellsville than any other astronomers combined, including the one that looks like a giant sloth, and is kind of an inspiration to Ellen), when Mike appeared like clockwork.

I tensed when I noticed he was hiding something behind his back.

As he grinned, wandering closer, I prepared to grab Ellen and dive behind the giant replica of Nancy Zornlicher, who's held the record for most creamed corn consumed by a single person since 1925. 

Mike slowly brought his arms forward--

I grabbed Ellen's sleeve...

hoping we would survive the fallout...

and watched in horror as he presented her with...

...a book about power tools?

(Needless to say, I ended up riding in the backseat when Mike ever-so-kindly offered to drive us home in his Mustang that night.)

 

-

 

Not after long, spring was over, and with it? The Fever officially ended.

(Wendell had returned from Tahiti with a tan and a new five album record deal.)

Best of all, my own spring-warped brain had returned to normal, effectively switching my feelings for Ellen back to the way they were best realized: as a comfortable friendship.

(Not to mention after a slew of apologies and promises to never act like such a jerkweed again - or at least, to ensure I got a Fever-preventing booster shot the following year, like she had.)

Everything was almost perfect. 

Almost.

Because,  despite spring being taken down by the iron fist of summer and my own Fever breaking, Endless Mike still hung around like lingering foot odor.

And worse? Ellen didn't even seem to mind.

At first,  I thought some ultra rare strain of The Fever had managed to mutate and cloud her mind-- that is, until I had to sit through a three-hour long conversation between her and Mike on the importance of welding helmets.

(Fever or no,  it would be pretty hard to fake enthusiasm about a topic that mind-melting.)

Weirder still? _Mike_ had come clean to her about the whole Wendell situation, weeks before I did. And she wasn't even that mad about it.

(Ellen's gone to some pretty ruthless lengths herself - mostly in pursuit of her grades - so maybe she just appreciated the kindred spirit.)

I had my best friend back. I had rightful control over my own emotions (I'd already scheduled my booster shot for next year, just to be safe). I should have been happy. 

But despite it all, I still had the sinking feeling that I was... losing something. 

-

 

"I don't get it," I moaned.

I sank down, burying my head in our front lawn. With any hope, the fumes from Dad's Krebergreen Weed Killer would put me out of my misery. 

My brother and Nona exchanged disgusted glances. They were currently sprawled across the corner of the yard, modifying their bikes. (Each now boasted blinding solar-powered headlights, outlawed in twenty-nine states.) They'd been listening to me whine about Ellen and Mike's sudden magnetic attachment for the past week, now.

"You said Mike hasn't been making meatloaf of your face lately," my brother said, suspicion coloring his tone.  He found Mike's recent foray into not pulverizing me just as hard to believe as I did. 

"Yeah," I muttered into the grass.

"And Ellen actually _likes_ that human toejam."

"Yeah..."

"So what's the big deal?" Nona demanded.

"You're too young to understand," I insisted. I received a pair of eyerolls for my troubles. 

"Try us, Crankbait!"

(My brother has little patience for the squirming of cowards.)

"Well, it's... we..." I sighed. "Ellen and I have been friends for so long."

"So?"

"So, she's a girl,  and she's my friend,  but I... I guess I never thought it would just... end there."

My brother's eyes narrowed. "Are you saying that for your friendship to be important, it has to end with you guys getting married in Nebraska or something?"

"That's not what I meant at all!"

"Then why are you talking about it the same way you would about licking an armpit?"

I snapped my mouth shut, effectively stopping my next retort. I blinked.

For someone so young, my brother could be incredibly wise.

 

-

 

I found Ellen sitting on a swing at the Wellsville Community Playground. It was dark, and fireflies had found their way back to town for the summer.

She smiled when she saw me approach. "Hey, Pete."

"Hey."

I used to think that in order to have a future together,  it had to be of the holding hands, serenaded by Top 40 Funk Hits of the '70s variety - or else, one day, I'd lose her forever. But thanks to my brother,  and Ellen herself, I finally realized how ridiculous that worry had been.

Endless Mike would never be my favorite person. And maybe he still terrified me a little bit.

(Okay, maybe a lot.)

But when I saw how happy Ellen was around him, discussing limb-mangling power tools, or exchanging wrestling tips (she was teaching him the Reverse Wildigee), I knew I couldn't begrudge her that.

Because when she smiled at me, I was thrown out of orbit by a sudden memory of the first time she ever did: of the gap she once had between her teeth, clutching her dad's hand as he led her into Mrs. Hermleiffer's preschool class, wearing an oversized sweater with a rocketship stitched onto it - and I knew things were going to be okay.

We still had a future together. It was just different than the one I'd always expected. But it was a future I knew I believed in.

I took the swing next to her, and smiled back.

 

 

 

 


End file.
